


god moves on

by strangeness



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Character, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 18:28:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4232223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeness/pseuds/strangeness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>roxas and axel realize they are two separate trains on the same set of tracks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	god moves on

**(1)** It’s spring when they meet. The first thing they notice about each other is how tall one another is. Roxas has to look up into the sun to so much as recognize that Axel is a person as opposed to a very animated tree. To Axel, Roxas looks like an ant, fire red and ready to bite, but easily foiled with the stomp of a properly placed boot. They see one another many times before they ever actually speak. That’s the thing, really. Neither of them say anything to one another, and they already have this unspoken agreement to look but not touch, not break the tenuous silence between them.

In truth it’s the gap between platforms that separates them. Axel sees Roxas for the first time at the train station up in Station Heights on the opposite platform, a head of swishy blond hair that rolled like sand pouring over toes as the other man walked. Roxas is always heading north, and Axel catches a train southbound into downtown. He could drive, but downtown parking being as cooperative as a particularly petulant child, the freedom that public transit offers him is oddly comforting.

Often, he finds himself wondering where Roxas is going, always north, every day. The beach, maybe? Axel has never gone; he can’t swim. He wonders if Roxas ever thinks the same of him, wonders where Axel goes, wonders if he even knows Axel exists. It’s like this for months: Axel staring at Roxas from across the gap, always minding it, and wondering what there is to this mysterious person always heading in the same direction without turning. Wondering why he cares so much.

Roxas is always alone, except for once or twice. A girl with rolling chocolate locks, or two boys who look significantly artificial next to their friend made of sand. It’s these three children who informally introduce Axel to Roxas, calling his name occasionally, or teasing in the loud way that they do, never knowing that the world has ears too.

“ _Roxas,_ ” they say, and Axel tests the words on his tongue, feels how the name curves around his lips as he whispers it. His mouth is magnesium and the sand being poured down his throat is the flint; a name sets him ablaze.

He whispers it sometimes, and every time without fail, Roxas glances at him, like he knows.

Something clicks. The next day, Roxas is standing on the southbound platform when Axel parks his car in the lot. He notices from his place behind the dash, and takes an extra ten minutes watching from the safety of his windshield. It’s peak hour and two trains barrel past the platform. Roxas remains where he is, wind whipping at him and Axel is just shocked the sand boy doesn’t blow away.

“You look like a criminal,” is the first thing that Roxas ever says to him. Axel remembers to be offended for later, but instead raises his brows and whistles.

“Bold.” Is the first thing Axel says back. It makes the incredible happen: Roxas smiles, the heat of it melting him to glass. Frosted over, Axel can’t see inside.

* * *

 

 **(2)** Roxas is an artist, or at least a kid that refers to himself as such. Nineteen years old and armed with a jaded disposition and a ballpoint pen, Axel thinks he breathes in shades and exhales colours in brilliant pastel. He watches now, as Roxas hunches over, drawing aimless lines on blank pages, flipping through them each time he messes up. No patience for his art whatsoever. Axel wonders if that part comes with training.

“Can you draw me?” He asks suddenly, surprising even himself. They’re seated on a bench underneath the rain shelter at the station. The trains aren’t even running at this time of night. Neither of them have made a move to go home. Neither of them have a reason to stay. They don’t even speak much.

The only sound between them is the hum of the lights overhead, which Roxas uses to guide his pen across paper, lazy and without guidance. Axel wonders if he’s even drawing or just covering pages with ink.

Roxas himself meets the question with a deadpan. “I have,” is what he says, a shrug hunching and releasing his shoulders in a moment’s notice. There is a pensive look to him, he doesn’t even look up at Axel at all, just keeps layering the same lines again and again.

“Can I see?” He prompts, and Roxas gives a sigh before wordlessly flipping through the book. It takes a few moments, finding the right page, and then he displays it for Axel to see. This particular drawing is in pencil, smudged from the pages chafing together. Even without colour, Axel can tell it’s him.

Wild hair—it can’t look like that when he goes to work, can it?—with inquisitive eyes that peer out at the flesh Axel, the portrait is almost breathtaking. Lines delicately drawn down to wrist level depict Axel wearing a pair of handcuffs, but regret isn’t something that crosses the drawing’s expression.

“ _Portrait: Boy Looking for God_.” Axel reads the title messily scrawled underneath. Squinting, he looks up and finally keeps eye contact with Roxas. “I’m not looking for god.”

The other man shrugs. “One interpretation.”

“It’s not an _interpretation_. It’s my life.”

Roxas shuts the sketchbook suddenly and adjusts the beanie on his head, hiding his sandy hair save for the strands poking out at the nape of his neck like gravel. “It’s my art.” There’s a pause, and then he smiles. “Art imitates life, you know?”

Axel shakes his head. He isn’t looking for a god. Wouldn’t know where to start even if he thought there was something to be found.

“Ever draw yourself?” He asks, needing to change the subject suddenly.

This earns a scowl. “Not exactly.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Roxas has mastered the art of answering in pictures instead of words. Axel wonders if that makes him an artist after all. He opens the sketchbook again and turns to the first page. Axel is greeted with the sight of a tree with it’s branches burning into ash.

 _Self Portrait: Nobody_ , Axel reads but does not say.

“This is me.” Roxas says simply.

* * *

 

 **(3)** Axel notes this habit that Roxas has. He draws things in his mind. He wonders if that ever translates onto the page, but in the grand scheme of things it is irrelevant. Axel is brushing his teeth at eight in the morning when he notices Roxas doing it for the first time.

Seated at the foot of the bed, he watches Roxas’s reflection in the mirror, his finger wildly dancing across his kneecap as he inspects the scene before him in intense focus. Axel realizes that he is drawing on his knee with his finger, painting a picture visible only to Roxas, and even then is fleeting and fades from logical existence moments after its creation.

“You have tattoos.” Roxas says plainly. No tone to his voice, there is no judgment, there’s no curiosity. It’s merely a statement of fact, as if Roxas knew he did and is stating for someone else to hear. “On your face.”

“Yeah,” Axel says, applying the coverup to the purple ink that’s layered into his skin.

“Why do you cover it up?” Roxas is sketching teardrops onto his jeans where the fabric is running thin, about to give way to a hole in the denim.

“I work in an office.”

“I mean all the time. This is the first time I’ve seen it.”

Axel isn’t sure how to answer. “I don’t know.” Is the answer he gives, lame but honest.

“Why even have tattoos then?”

Axel sighs, and looks at Roxas in the mirror. The light has just started to stream into the room through the gap in the heavy curtains, a single stripe of light stretches across Roxas’s face diagonally like a scar. “Roxas, there’s just a staple of professionalism that—“

“I used to swallow staples.” Roxas says suddenly, and Axel turns to face him, certain he’s unheard.

He opens his mouth to speak, but Roxas goes in for the next blow. “Oh, yeah. For years. I started when I was eight years old.” He blinks, drops his hand from his knee, stares off into space.

“What?” Axel asks, lame but unsure what else there is to say.

“I stopped when I was fifteen. I was always losing papers. It just got to be too big of a nuisance.”

“Why did you eat staples?” Axel asks him, blinking, half of his face covered and the other naked to the boy.

“I was hoping they would poke me from the inside out so I could burst open.”

“Did they?” It’s more of a teasing question. Axel doesn’t know how to react, and a joke is the only way of melting the ice between them that he can think of.

“No, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t lost hope.” Roxas says, and then he laughs, tossing his head back against the mattress, the light stretching down to his throat, slashing it open as he chuckles.

 _Insane_ , Axel thinks. _Fucking crazy_ , Axel thinks. Roxas just laughs.

* * *

 

 **(4)** Roxas doesn’t let him do more than kiss his mouth and rest his hands at his sides, thumbs pressing novels into Roxas’s pelvis. Sometimes, Axel isn’t allowed to do even that. Existing in the same space is sometimes exhausting for Roxas, who has become even more untouchable since Axel was granted privileges beyond looking.

The night before Axel learns about the staples, they try to fuck. Axel gets down to his underwear and Roxas wears a huge t-shirt that covers his frame like a blanket, allowing himself to be pushed into the mattress. Axel delves a hand down into the depths of Roxas’s body, which causes the younger man to shudder. Axel thinks it is a positive shockwave, and continues his bold assault and Roxas shudders and then sobs underneath him.

Something breaks inside of Axel and he practically jumps away, across the room. “What—“ Axel begins, but isn’t sure where to even begin. Roxas shifts, sitting up and pulling his knees to his chest and peering at him over the peaks of his kneecaps, his frame wobbling and about to topple from the wracking of his crying.

“Bad experiences,” is what he offers later, red rimmed eyes cascading over a sheepish smile. Axel says nothing, doesn’t know what he’s supposed to glean from that. Just presses his nose into the crease of Roxas’s shoulder blade, and they sleep like that, nosing along sharp edges.

Now they kiss and touch and sleep alongside one another in adjacent rows but it feels like they don’t touch and sleep together in the way that counts. Axel feels like they’re doing everything in halves. Roxas tells him that’s narrow to think like that, but all Axel thinks about is that he’s never even seen Roxas without a shirt on.

“Can I draw you?” Roxas asks one day and Axel shrugs.

“You’ve drawn me before.”

“Naked.” Roxas says, his voice even and uncaring and Axel nearly chokes.

He sits against a window, nude and feeling pale as the light of the overcast day spills over his body and Roxas draws him in half an hour. He shows Axel, who he’s drawn in straight lines and blue ink.

“You make me look pretty good,” Axel remarks, flopping down on his bed and taking Roxas with him, fingers ghosting over his flesh through the material of his shirt to tickle him. It coaxes a sound from Roxas that feels unnatural; laughter echoing genuinely from his diaphragm. Afterwards, Roxas says nothing, but he is smiling when he ducks into the bathroom. Axel doesn’t mean to and entirely means to at the same time but he peeks at Roxas’s sketchbook, which he hasn’t bothered to bring the past few times he’s been over. Flipping the page from the most recent drawing, where Roxas has offered him rebirth, he is greeted with the next drawing, which makes him shut the book as quickly as he opened it.

Depicted: Roxas, pinned against a bed with an unseen figure assaulting him in a way that makes Axel understand why he’s never seen Roxas without a shirt, why he peeks over shaky kneecaps.

Titled: _Self Portrait: Bad Experiences_

“It was my first time,” Roxas tells him once in the dark, when Axel’s face is pressed against the knife of the other man’s shoulder. Axel doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have to, and knows what Roxas is speaking about. He pretends like he is asleep, like Roxas is sending him subliminal messages in his dreams.

“A week after my eighteenth.” He elaborates after a minute. “I didn’t know him well. We just worked together.” Roxas says, and Axel thinks he doesn’t know that Roxas had a job. “I guess I sorta liked him.”

There’s a vast plain of silence then, and Axel thinks he’s done before: “I went to his place. Took a bus from my place to his across town.” Axel’s eyes are open and staring at the blackness of Roxas’s skin, like the night is pooling to form his skeleton. “He said we were gonna watch movies. He just fucked me instead.”

“I didn’t say no.” Roxas offers, like it’s something that’s been pointed out to him before. “I didn’t say yes either.” It’s like he’s arguing with himself.

“Now I’m broken and sex grosses me out and freaks me out.” There’s a sigh. “Broken.” There’s a conclusive shifting, and Axel says nothing until Roxas’s breathing gives away his dreams, evening out into slumber.

He makes a promise to the blond then. “I can fix it.”

* * *

 

 **(5)** Axel has known Roxas for about a month when he starts to wonder if Roxas even likes him. He gets little done at work for hours at a time because his time is spent twirling a pen between two fingers and staring off into space. The unfurling of spring is upon them and so the windows in the office are open. Far below in the streets, Axel can hear car horns blaring in downtown traffic.

A file is thrown across his desk, splaying papers everywhere across the white surface that’s periodically rimmed with coffee stains. “Be a little more useful, Axel.” Comes Larxene’s biting voice. Axel normally has some quip to return to her. That’s how this relationship works. They banter with each other and it’s normal. Larxene is cruel to him and he gives just as good as he receives and on some level it makes them friends because they’re bickering has turned into constants in both of their lives.

Axel says nothing to her and she lets out an exasperated sigh, fascinated with something on her cuff. “Axel, listen, I know you’re trying to get into like a fifteen year old’s pants but can you at least try to be a professional when you’re here?”

It’s annoying that the first thing that comes to his mind is “He’s nineteen.” Speaking of annoying, Larxene laughs, and then scoffs.

“Those four years really count when you’re going on twenty-five, huh?” Axel doesn’t bother saying that it’s more professional than pining after their boss, which Larxene totally is, but masks it behind indifference in white-bloused swaths and a tendency to bring Axel into all of her shit.

“Are you bothering me for a reason or is the dry spell you’re going through so bad that you need to distract yourself from how ugly you feel?” He doesn’t say how being with Roxas is like a desert, and it feels irrelevant.

Larxene frowns in mock hurt before brushing a lock of hair behind her small ear. “Just a report Marluxia wanted you to look over.” She rolls their boss’s name off of her tongue like the tapping of a drumstick against a snare and it makes Axel sick with her particular brand of infatuation.

Then she’s walking away and Axel starts twirling the pen in his fingers again.

Later Roxas tries to break up with him, like they’re dating or they’re anything at all. “…Me. It’s like I’m crazy. There’s something wrong with me.”

Axel just stares at him, wants to say “tell me something I don’t know,” but it comes out sounding like “I don’t care.” Hurt starts to cloud over Roxas’s features like milk, but Axel says, “I’m crazy too.”

Roxas is sitting on the ledge where Axel sat days ago when Roxas drew the nude of him. It’s night, and snowy skin is framed by the black halo of the outdoors. Axel himself leans against the doorway, hands crisscrossed behind his back, and his shoulders hunched. He’s bent slightly at the hips and he’s staring out the window, the space around Roxas’s face.

When Roxas speaks, his voice is scratchy and thick, like it hasn’t been used in forever. “I’m sorry I’m fucked up and won’t have sex with you.” It’s simple and blunt and Axel almost winces. “Because you’re all right and deserve to get laid.”

“But I’m me and I suck and I’m sorry.” Roxas shrugs, and his knuckles are white against the moleskin cover of his sketchbook in his hands.

“Listen,” Axel says, pushing off the wall and, once again, flopping onto his bed, propping himself up on an elbow and looking at Roxas intently. “It’s fine.” Axel’s mouth is making rings around the words now; he wonders if they’ll mean anything later. “I don’t know if this is a forever thing or—“

“It’s forever.” Roxas says simply, quietly, with certainty.

“Alright, okay,” Axel waves his hand. “Then I’m gonna promise you something.” Roxas looks at him like he knows people breaks promises all the time. Axel wants to know that he’s the exception to the rule, but he’s bubbling with uncertainty on whether or not he is.

“I’m not gonna, like, go. Because you don’t wanna fuck.” Axel says to him. “But you can’t go because you feel guilty about it.”

“But I do.” Roxas says, swallowing like there are rocks in his throat. Axel wonders if he really is made of sand. “You aren’t the first one to make promises.”

“Then let’s make a deal.” Axel relents. “I won’t go if you won’t?”

“That,” Roxas begins, his fingers thumbing idly through the pages of his book. “Feels like a trap.”

“Maybe it is.” Maybe it is.

“Okay.” Maybe it is.

* * *

 

 **(6)** “I don’t,” is the answer Roxas offers Axel when asked where he works. Axel wants to point out that Roxas works with the person who broke him, but mentioning it feels like it would cause the gears in Roxas to shift and then stick together in need of repair. “It used to be a shitty department store.”

They’re in a shitty department store, and when Axel points it out, Roxas gives a huff and shrugs. “Not this one.” He confirms, and Axel knows that on some level. Roxas is the type to leave things behind forever and vanish like he was never really there. Axel thinks it’s fascinating and terrifying how the blond is always on the verge of fading.

It’s Saturday, and Roxas spent the night at his place. They woke together, simultaneously, underneath the blue of Axel’s quilt shortly after noon. Axel recalls Roxas’s collarbones peeking out from the shirt—Axel’s—that he wore, the material coming to a rest at his knees like he was wearing a dress. Roxas had just rolled his eyes and sat up, drawing himself ( _Self Portrait: Boy in Fire’s Clothing_ ) wearing the other man’s clothes.

They’re having a good day, and Axel knows this because Roxas undresses in front of him—back to Axel, so he sees nothing but the slender backside of the blond, but he takes victories where he can get—and Axel notes how scars litter Roxas’s back in a million little pieces, signifying glass once upon a time. Axel thinks he wants to connect the dots with his tongue, tucks the thought underneath his armpits and pretends he isn’t famished.

It had been Roxas idea to go out—“to people watch”—and Axel had just gone with it, because it is rare that Roxas speaks candidly at all, and observing the observer as he observes is Axel’s favorite pastime.

Axel had went to cover up his tattoos, but Roxas had stopped him, resting his thumbs in the hollows of Axel’s face where the ink rested, shaking his head. They left without showering, and Roxas looks unkempt. Hair tousled in every direction, and he decides to wear Axel’s sweatshirt, which is loose and grey—he is swimming in ashes.

Axel is trying and failing to convince himself that he doesn’t need a novelty telephone in the shape of supple red lips when it happens. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Roxas flash out of sight, running and weaving through aisles. Irrationally, Axel is terrified that Roxas is willowing into smoke without asking first, and he follows just as quick.

He finds Roxas standing in the toy aisle next to creepy dolls that spoke to their owners, lining either side of him like a cage that threatened to come alive in the next breath. Roxas is counting backwards from ten, exhaling as he does so until his lungs are gasping in protest.

“Roxas, what the f—“

“It was him.” Roxas says, like it is an answer. Axel blinks, once, and then twice. “The guy.” Roxas elaborates, air whistling through his teeth like he has sliced himself open.

It clicks for Axel. _The_ guy. Because with Roxas, The Guy is not Axel, is not even someone who can be forever, but it is the person who was a humiliating instant that stretches out over Roxas life like a blanket made of wool, thick and irritating and clinging to him in cool sweat.

Axel wants to spit in disgust, doesn’t, instead says, “Should we—we should go.” It’s lame, but what else can he say?

Roxas stares at him for a long moment, and then the impossible happen. The dolls around them come to life. It starts with one, whispering “I love you,” in a saccharine voice that makes Axel’s skin crawl and his teeth hurt. They start from the vocal intrusion, and then every doll repeats the words, as if set off by motion.

Roxas looks at him, as if to say, “yeah fucking right”, and closes his eyes, starts whispering out “tennineeightsevensixfivefourthreetwoone” and Axel wheezes out a sick laugh. _Crazy,_ he thinks. _Fucking insane_.

* * *

 

 **(7)** Five months in is when Axel starts to drift. He wants to plant his teeth in Roxas and keep them there so he is promised to something. He watches Roxas sleep in the blue of the early morning, eyes studying the length of the nineteen year old’s lashes, how they’re invisible in the light. It occurs to him that this is the only time he sees Roxas at peace.

He feels like he is being wrung like a towel when he realizes how young Roxas is; how young and how bleak he is. The bleakness is what draws Axel in and repels him like two magnets that are constantly switching poles, orbiting around one another and never quite coming together into fruition.

He wants to touch, but doesn’t. It occurs to him that Roxas is beyond rational reason, because Axel figures out in this dawn that he both loves and hates Roxas for what he is and how he exists.

Blue eyes flutter open and wordlessly stares up at him, and Axel falls in and drowns. He wakes up on Roxas’s beaches, mouth full of sand and resents how he can only have metaphorically.

They made a deal, not a promise. Axel hates himself and Roxas hates himself and knows that promises mean nothing. “Morning.” Roxas says to him, voice light and drowsy and somehow, against all odds, in love, and Axel blinks once and closes his eyes before going back to sleep.

He wakes later, isn’t sure how long he was out, hears Roxas in the shower. Like a habit, he turns open the cover of his sketchbook and looks through the drawings.

_Portrait: Boy Looking for God_

Axel wonders if God is existent and watching them now. Settles on the positive for both—why else would he feel like such a shithead?—and turns the pages. He flips through pages, noting how they are all of him and wonders if he’s become Roxas’s muse.

Depicted: There is one drawing in brilliant color. It’s them. Axel is swathed in the reds of flames and Roxas is solidifying into greys and whites, glass crystal attached to Axel, the sand of his back blowing away into beiges and yellows.

Titled: _Portrait: God Found_

 _Wrong_ , Axel thinks, and hates himself for spitting in the face of beauty and disaster.

* * *

 

 **(8)** He doesn’t know what starts it, but he knows what ends it. Roxas stands in the doorway of the bathroom off of Axel’s bedroom, eyes bleary from the beautiful, illegal fucked upness of his being right now. He is framed with natural light of the rising sun and the streetlights that have yet to slip into their daily hibernation.

Axel just stares and says nothing, nostrils flaring in anger of things left to simmer underneath. “Not like you love me.” He spits, and his words walk along a tightrope to Roxas, who reacts as if they will teeter to their death at any moment.

“Because I won’t fuck you.” Roxas answers for himself, and his voice is quiet but it screams in frustration of how it always comes back to this.

“It’s not—I don’t know.” Axel says, foot tapping against the carpet of his bedroom and Roxas scoffs.

“You do know.” He’s told, like he’s being lectured. “It’s not enough for you. You’re frustrated. Whatever.” He blinks a few times, rapidly. Axel wonders if the dam is going to break. It does not. “I get it, I do.”

“It’s not enough, is it?” Roxas is wobbling, and Axel remembers his stare from over shaking kneecaps as he sobbed on the bed in what feels like hours ago.

Axel feels like _such_ a jerk when he says, “Love isn’t love without a body.”

Roxas actually laughs, and it sounds like it was recorded to play for occasions like this. Axel hates it, wants to stuff a sock into Roxas’s mouth. “Such a poet, Axel.”

“It’s not enough,” he confirms.

Roxas is wearing that same hoodie of his again, Axel can literally see him undulating away into nothing and out of sight. Roxas coughs, as if choking on his own smoke. “Okay.” It hurts how he says it, like he’s done this before. Like Axel doesn’t mean anything. Like Axel didn’t find God in him.

Roxas pulls the sweater off, exposing his lovely stomach as his arms outstretch over his head. Axel’s eyes zero in on the flesh, his tongue wants to circle the blond’s navel. It’s gone as soon as it comes, and Roxas drops the garment onto the floor. He pushes past Axel to leave the room and, ultimately, the apartment.

Axel pulls Roxas’s lips to his. Roxas recoils as if he has been shot when a tongue wanders into his mouth and is not reciprocated. Axel worries his teeth against Roxas’s supple bottom lip, tasting the hard lemonade that he’s been drinking all night.

“Try for me.” Is what he whispers and Roxas chokes.

“Axel—“ He begins, but doesn’t finish the thought because Axel silences him again with his lips, pressing hard and they tilt and end up on the bed. Axel finds Roxas’s hand and clasps it hard, is pleased to find that Roxas clings to him just as tightly.

“Please.” He murmurs. “Try for me,” he repeats, planting a kiss to Roxas’s neck. “Try for me,” he repeats, running his tongue along the lovely dip of Roxas’s collar bone. “Try for me,” he repeats, the words hot in the boy’s ear as he gently nips the lobe.

Roxas grabs his face in that familiar way, thumbs resting in Axel’s hollows and looking into his eyes intently. Axel thinks he sees the beginnings of tears, but then Roxas blinks and they are gone.

Roxas, trembling for what it’s worth, whispers. “Okay.”

* * *

 

 **(9)** It doesn’t work.

They move together, in and out, the way a tide is indecisive about whether it wants to stay or not. Axel notices Roxas’s body shaking with the familiar kneecap tears halfway through, hates himself because he doesn’t stop until after they’ve peaked.

Roxas lays there and tries to pretend that what just happened did not just happen and Axel kisses along his vertebrae. Axel watches him swallow and suddenly realizes he’s not going to see Roxas ever again.

He watches the boy dress, watches him harden into frosted glass and billow away like smoke all at once, and Axel lights a cigarette, coughs because he hasn’t smoked since he was seventeen. Roxas has closed his doors, and his eyes are dull as he turns to Axel, standing in the doorway of the bedroom, blissfully young and terribly bleak and so, so, so beautiful. Axel knows this is the last look.

“I’ll call you later,” are the last words Roxas says to him. Axel says nothing, making his last words to Roxas the pathetic “try for me.” He knows Roxas won’t call him later, but both of them are in the habit of breaking promises.

Roxas leaves, and Axel smokes cigarette after cigarette, putting them out in his palm and relishing the burn until he can no longer smell the scent of their sex, diminishing into nothing, and this way Axel can pretend he didn’t violate the beach the way the ocean does over and over again. He realizes bitterly that now he’s The Guy for Roxas too now, hates himself for turning and incident into a list.

It’s nine in the morning, Roxas leaves his life for good on a Monday morning at 8:55.

He grabs his phone from where it’s been forgotten on the floor with seven percent left. He calls Larxene, says he has a doctor’s appointment, won’t come into work, and hangs up on her mid-sentence.

Axel wills God for a miracle, or to be just left alone altogether. God, of course, gives no answer and so he takes the world into his own hands and turns back time.

* * *

 

 _(10)_ Roxas starts to feel like he’s moving through water all the time.

The first thing he does when he leaves Axel’s apartment is vomit in the bush right next to the door, his chest heaving from the effort and he notices how it is a disgusting shade of yellow, ghosts of lemonade and vodka and Roxas thinks it’s fitting that his insides are as ugly as he feels.

And then the world continues to turn, and the sun shines through the clouds and Roxas feels like protesting that it at least could have been overcast. He feels anachronistic in a morning that overflows with beauty and hope.

He walks home because standing and waiting for the train is maybe the last thing he ever wants to do again because if he looks across the platform and sees Axel ever again he think he might blow away like he doesn’t exist.

“I’ll call you later,” Roxas had told him, and instead he deletes Axel’s number from his phone. It’s useless, because Roxas knows the digits off by heart, drew an outline of them kissing once using those same numbers. It’s engrained in Roxas’s mind, and he feels like carving them into a tombstone.

As it turns out, Axel lives far away from him. He’s walked this same path before, but it feels longer now, each step heavier. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the fact that his lower back aches in evidence with each weighted step that he takes.

He dumps himself into his bed when he gets home, face first and throwing his sketchbook to the floor. He never wants to open that particular book again, doesn’t even know if he wants to ever pick up a pen or pencil and draw again period.

He doesn’t do what he expects; doesn’t shower or brush his teeth. He doesn’t try to erase Axel off of him the way he had tried to do to Seifer just over a year ago after the first time. He instead shrugs himself free of his clothes and stares at his body. Roxas decided long ago that he’s all sharp architecture and corners. It’s comforting to know that touching him is like being stabbed, Roxas thinks. It keeps hands to themselves.

Even sharp edges can be given nicks along the blade, and he knows this when he glances over his shoulder to look at his back, looking at the scars that litter the plane his spine and pool at the small. It had happened forever ago, the ticks along his edges.

His brother had dared him to jump out of the living room window, and he did. Since then, Roxas has become keen on the life of self-destruction.

He wills his skin to part with a few more scars; some for Seifer, some for Axel. His eyes narrowing into daggers, as if vision can cut. His skin, of course, remains completely unchanged.

* * *

 

 _(11)_ A month passes, Roxas decides to live again. Halfheartedly, as he does everything, but enough becomes enough, and Roxas isn’t sure what’s worse. The fact that he wallows so intensely that he can vanish for thirty consecutive days, or the fact that no one really seems to notice him fading from existence.

He starts his life again by sitting in The Usual Spot, looking at ghosts. He hasn’t come here in a few years, neither has Hayner, neither has Olette, neither has Pence. Not since the last day of high school and the all went separate ways for vacation. The three of them skipped town with their families and Roxas had spent his days skateboarding around town without aim.

Generally, that’s what he still does. Without aim or a college to go to, there’s nothing to do but take trains and look at ghosts. Not that he isn’t still friends with the other three, because he is. But education drives a wedge that separates him.

“Apply for art,” Olette had told him on that last day. Roxas had shrugged and said nothing and left the application sitting underneath his bed at home.

He’s clutching it now, sealed in a plain white envelope, and the ghosts blink away. There’s a mailbox at the train station, but going there feels like dragging nails into his muscles and tearing them out. But Roxas has decided to be alive and that’s synonymous with moving forward.

It is a regrettable march up the hill to the post box, which sits forgotten in a corner next to the station entrance. Roxas stands for two fateful minutes in front of it before slipping the envelope inside and free falling into the future.

The future, which answers him quite abruptly, without warning, slamming wind out of him when he turns and sees Axel standing a few feet behind him, an envelope in hand. Roxas can do nothing but stare, tightlipped, and a million things flitting across his eyes but not making it to his mind.

“Can I help you?” Roxas looks up at Axel, up into the sun to recognize for the millionth time that the man is not a tree. He waits to see a flutter of recognition in Axel’s eyes, and sees nothing.

“You can’t.” Roxas says, then rubs his arm self consciously, like it burns where Axel touched him all those days ago during sunrise.

Something occurs to him when Axel speaks. “You’re pretty cute. What’s your name?” The impossible, that’s what he thinks. Axel is always doing the impossible, and he’s forgotten Roxas. Erased him somehow, and Roxas realizes that his mark on Axel was not like a knife, but like a pencil.

He doesn’t answer, just walks away, remembers that he never had to tell Axel his name because he just knew.

* * *

 

 _(12)_ Roxas is not the biggest seeker of truths in the world, but there is an affliction in him that forces him onto a train for the first time in thirty-five days, eight hours, and two minutes. Southbound, into downtown. It is a Friday. It is morning, and it is earlier than Roxas has woken up in a year.

He’s never been to Axel’s office, lucky he even knows where it is. All he knows is the name, and in the myriad of identical skyscrapers, there is thankfully only one that sounds familiar.

He steps off the elevator on the fifth floor, and is greeted with a boring office that he can’t imagine Axel ever being in. A blonde sits at the desk closest to his, not even looking up at the pinging of the elevator, signifying arrivals and departures.

Larxene, does however, look up when he approaches. From the way she looks at him, it occurs to Roxas that she knows who he is despite never seeing her in either of their lives. “You’re him.” Is what she says, and Roxas says nothing in reply, eyes narrowing in expectation and silence hangs between them like a noose.

“No offense,” she clicks, “but how old are you?”

He blinks. “Nineteen.”

“At least your stories line up.” Larxene says, her voice dripping with judgement. “But still, I knew you looked like a little kid, but _Christ_ does he like them young.”

Roxas raises an eyebrow at her, but she’s returned to her work like the conversation is over. Roxas decides he hates her and wants to strangle her. “Axel?” He asks her, still searching for that answer.

“Not here,” she states, again, like it is an answer. And of course Axel isn’t here. Roxas turns to go, but Larxene clears her throat like he’s cut her off mid-sentence.

He turns expectantly, and she is holding a business card as if it’s offended her. She drops it and it flourishes through the air before lying facedown on the surface of the desk. “He told me to give this to you if you ever showed up. Before.” Before is a loaded term, Roxas is afraid to ask what it means.

Roxas glances at it. There is only a name— _Namine_ —and an address. “What is this?”

“A witch,” Larxene says simply. “Well, technically a doctor. What she does isn’t exactly medicine though.” This time, the conversation is over, because she looks at him finally and blinks.

“Thanks.” Roxas says.

“Why did he wanna forget you?”

Roxas feels like people should be asking that about _him_ , not Axel. He turns and leaves without answering.

Namine, whoever that is, has a business card that states that she’s located just a few blocks away from Axel’s office. Roxas decides to throw caution to the wind and pays her a visit.

She turns out to be a blonde, dressed smartly in a white dress and looking like a ghost. “Roxas,” she greets in the space of her small office, like she knows him. There is a sad warmth in her voice, and it occurs to him that this stranger pities him.

“We’ve met.” It’s not a question, and pieces are flitting almost—not quite—into place in his head.

She narrows her eyes slightly, searching for words. “No, not officially.”

There’s a pause, and she lifts a wrist and inspects it. The room is claustrophobic. “Axel.” Roxas says, as if that is the explanation for him being here, and it _is_.

“Yeah,” is Namine’s reply.

“He forgot me.”

“Yeah.”

Roxas wants to ask how, wants to ask why. What comes out is: “Can I forget too?” She’s nodding before the words are even finished leaving his mouth—

(he goes home, told to come back the next day well rested, and when he gets home he opens up his sketchbook, writing _i love you_ over and over, crosshatching over the lines of his sketches of Axel until the words bleed into _blahblahblahblah_. he pauses on _portrait: god found_ and crosses it out, writing in scribbles underneath: we were here)

—And something clicks.

* * *

 

 _(13)_ It’s basically brain damage, Namine tells him. A combination of hypnosis and medicine to literally tear memories out of consciousness. It’s not exactly legal, Namine tells him, and it might be vaguely and intensely dangerous.

Roxas decides he doesn’t care and goes under. When he surfaces, he is at the train station, only there is him and another him and Namine is there too.

Roxas watches as Axel gets out of his car in the parking lot and approaches the southbound platform. “Where are we?”

“This is the first time you met,” Namine says like she’s told someone this before. After a moment, “…He was always wondering where you were going.”

“The beach,” Roxas answers. Then, absently, “We never went.”

Namine looks at him and says, “You never asked.”

The memory fades like it is wiped in individual grains of sand, and just like that Roxas knows he has forgotten. “When you wake up, that’ll be gone.” Namine offers him, and he clings to her words like a lifeline.

Roxas swallows, and surroundings return to him. “What’s next?”

Namine shows him, and Axel is peeled away from him layer by layer slowly and almost painfully, memory and word lingering one at a time before vanishing, being taken away on southbound trains.

* * *

 

 _(14)_ “I told him I swallowed staples.” He tells her, even though she’s just heard. “I mean, I did. But I didn’t do it because I wanted to die.”

He looks up. “Why did I say that?” He’s quickly coming to realize that because Namine is not God because she has no answers. She shakes her head like she has countless times since they began, and the memory is wiped, phasing into Roxas’s favourite.

“Not this one,” is his immediate response. “Let me keep this one.” He tells her, and again, the head shake.

(It had been right after Roxas had drawn Axel naked. He had popped into the bathroom and Axel had looked at the picture, and Roxas had watched a rush of life and zeal for existence flood his eyes and cheeks. He winked at Roxas and said, “You make me look pretty good.” Then tackled him to the bed gently and tickled him until they were both breathless. It had been the first time Roxas had ever laughed without pain in the infinite aftermath of his rape).

It’s fading at the edges, bleeding into nothing. “Please.” He turns to her, and she’s blinking.

“I can’t give, I can’t leave. I can only take.” He takes a breath. “Sorry, Roxas.” It’s gone when he’s mid laugh, and the sound cuts off like it never existed in the first place.

And then it’s here.

Roxas wants to vomit again when he sees him and Axel on the bed that morning. He can’t help but notice how unnatural he looks reluctant and drowning against Axel body as they somehow move together in harmony. He wants to apologize to Axel for being the worst at sex ever like he isn’t the one who has been wronged.

“I don’t want to see this.” Roxas says to Namine, his voice is weak to his own ears. “Make it go away.”

“I can’t,” she says. Roxas thinks she can’t really do much of anything. “This is how the process works.”

So Roxas takes matters into his own hands, turns and leaves the room. Namine tries to stop him, but he cannot be reached. “Roxas!” His name echoes around in his own memories. At first it is just Namine’s voice chasing him, but Roxas runs out of the memory and into white blankness when Axel’s joins her like a twisted symphony.

And suddenly—

* * *

 

 _(15)_ —he is at the beach. It’s sunset, he’s resting somewhere in the surreality of fact and fantasy, and Axel is there, framed by the warm light like he commands the sun. Roxas just glances at him for a moment and then scoffs. “This isn’t real.” Roxas says. “This isn’t a memory.” He rationalizes. “We were never here.” He tries to convince himself.

“You,” Axel informs him, gently, his voice like a ghost blanketing over his skin and occupying his insides. “Are impossible to love.”

“ _This_ isn’t possible.” Roxas gestures at Axel, who laughs, tossing his head back, red hair falling back in soft tresses and suddenly Roxas wants to touch, can’t decide if he wants to yank it off of Axel’s scalp or let it slip through his fingers like hot water.

“You’re the one who thinks I make the impossible possible.” Axel says, and Roxas hates when he’s right, even when he isn’t real.

“What are you doing here?”

Axel shrugs, makes a vague motion with his right hand. “Y’know, this is it, Roxas.” He grins, and Roxas thinks he sees sadness in it, but he has to look right into the sun to look at Axel, like always. His eyes are up to their old tricks. “Our final moments, I guess.”

“Don’t make me barf.”

A laugh, “You said I was a poet.”

“Besides,” Roxas says, pushing Axel’s shoulder. He isn’t sure how he can be so familiar and casual in spite of everything. Maybe because it is real and because he wants to end on a note that he won’t remember but won’t regret. “It’s not _ours_. You aren’t even here. This is all me.”

Axel shrugs again. “Whatever gives you peace.” There’s quiet for a while, nothing but the song of the fake beach and fake ocean rolling together. “But like I said, you’re impossible to love.”

Roxas just blinks. “You’re a closed book, you know?” Axel continues. “I’ve never met someone so hands off. I didn’t even know if you liked me or not half the time.” This earns a wince.

“Sorry.” Roxas says quietly, and Axel laughs like he’s already forgiven him.

“I came to learn,” Axel continues. “That you needed something really specific.” Axel turns and looks at the ocean. Roxas suddenly remembers the man telling him that he couldn’t swim. “I thought I could do that— _be_ —that. I wanted to try, because I loved you even if you didn’t like me. But—“

“You aren’t built for it. It’s fine.” Roxas says, and he wonders if it is. He wonders if Axel really did love him, if love could be that breakable and, yes, that shallow.

“I’m sorry.” Axel finally says. “For making you try. It wasn’t right.” And it wasn’t, but Roxas says nothing in reply. “I shouldn’t have gotten into your head like that.” They sit, facing the waves, and Roxas is torn between being unable to look at Axel and wanting to pour over every detail of his face to remember _something_.

“I thought I could make it work—“ Roxas begins, but then cuts himself off. “No, I didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t. But I wanted to fix myself for you.” He had wanted a lot of things, he realizes. “Didn’t work.” He gives a half smile that makes his face ache.

“So now,” Roxas continues. “I’m erasing you.”

“Yeah,” Axel replies.

He pauses. “And I’m happy.” He says, more for the response than to be truthful. He doesn’t know what the truth is.

“Yeah,” Axel replies. “I’m trying to make it up to you. For what happened.”

“You can’t,” Roxas says, and the honesty of his words even hurts himself, like cuts littering his throat. “Ever.”

“I know,” Axel says quickly. “This was the only way I knew. To forget. It’s why I left that thing with Larxene, because I knew you’d come looking and I was trying to make it up to you even though I can’t.”

“But we were happy,” Roxas immediately argues, his voice smaller than ever. “We had happiness too. And now it’s all gone.” It doesn’t feel like a solution.

“Yeah, but that’s God.” Axel says, and then grins, referring to the portrait. “Think I’ll ever find him?”

Roxas thinks of the sketch, the one he did months before ever speaking to Axel. He thinks of the handcuffs, and realizes that they’re him, restricting and starving Axel out.

“God—moves on.” Roxas answers. “If a god exists, it moved on a long time ago.” It would explain a lot, like why he had allowed Roxas to swallow staples and then pretend it was an act of self destruction, like why he had allowed him to be broken not once, but twice. Like why the two of them were permitted to forget in the first place.

“Maybe,” Axel says, and always playing the devil’s advocate, adds, “But what if it hasn’t?”

“Then meet me here tomorrow.” Roxas answers, it’s automatic and frightening. He’s almost giddy at the thought of a second life. “And we can start over.”

“I thought this wasn’t real.” There is a teasing to Axel’s voice, and Roxas wants to punch him and hug him and kiss him and kill him all at once. “And I can’t swim, remember?”

“Make the impossible possible. It’s your thing.”

Axel laughs, his hair cascading down his back and fading into nothing. Moments later, he’s gone, and so is the beach. It’s replaced by a street in Station Heights, and Namine is looking at him like he’s the dead come back to life.

“That was dangerous,” is the reprimand she offers. “I’m waking you up now, are you ready?”

Roxas, impossibly, smiles, and shakes his head. True to her word, Namine wakes him and he is free and he forgives.

* * *

 

 _(16)_ He sits in bed until two in the morning looking through his sketchbook, captivated by the portraits of the man who has apparently captivated his thoughts for months. He doesn’t recall sketching any of them, but they exist, and they are in his style. He doesn’t know why words cross over the drawings though, and he wonders if his sketchbook has been taken sometime and then returned without his noticing.

He wakes the next morning to an offer of admission from the university. He doesn’t remember applying.

* * *

 

 _(1)_ Roxas makes his way to the train station, and when he arrives, a unfamiliar face is standing on the northbound platform.

“It’s you.” Are the first words Roxas says to Axel. Axel, who turns and grins in a way that’s almost comforting.

“I think I’ve drawn you.” Roxas says, and it’s all falling just slightly out of place.

Instead of an answer, Axel asks him, “Where are you going?”

Roxas smiles, “The beach. You?”

“Sunset Terrace. Work thing.”

“Ah,” Roxas says, and almost feels disappointed. “See you around?”

He gets a “maybe,” with that smile that Roxas thinks he could grow to love in another life. But Axel sits on the opposite side of the car from him.

Two stops later, he watches Axel get off the train, wonders if he’s missed a chance or dodged a bullet.

To both: almost. Not quite.

Finally, God leaves them alone.

* * *

 

_How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot. / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray’r accepted, each wish resign’d._

**Author's Note:**

> so, this is an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind au. aka, my favorite movie of all time mixed with my two favorite awful tragic gay children, so like...of course it resulted in this. thank you for taking the time to read. this is the second time i've uploaded this onto here but i took it down before because i wanted to rework it into an original story, but it works way better as a fic i feel. so it's back with a few minor changes. bear with me for a while because this is _still_ unbeta'd. i know, that's awful, but i have no friends.
> 
> stay cute, and devastatingly, mind numbingly, angsty, everyone.


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